Real Madrid president Florentino Perez got the soccer world so roiled this week over a bad idea that you might have missed the other bad idea he’s championing.
Perez is chairman of the proposed European Super League, which would take 12 of the richest teams in Europe — not necessarily the best, something I can attest to as a suffering Arsenal fan — and place them in a Tuesday and Wednesday competition, insulated from the rabble of their various domestic leagues, creating something even more elite and less merit-based than the Champions League. This did not sit well with players or fans, and after a five-alarm fire on social media, the plan appears to be scuttled, though Perez is still insisting it will happen. (Barcelona president Joan Laporta is also still behind the idea, by the way.)
But on Monday night, Perez was interviewed on Spanish TV, and had a lot of thoughts about the beautiful game, proposing that matches be shortened from their requisite 90 minutes to better serve the shorter attention spans of "young people."
"Football has to change and adapt," he told El Chiringuito during the 90-minute interview, according to an ESPN report. "We have to analyze why young people, 16-to-24-year-olds, 40% of them aren't interested in football. Why? Because there are a lot of low-quality games, and they have other entertainment platforms.
“They say the games are too long. We have to change something if we want football to stay alive. Sometimes we don't understand our children or grandchildren. They're different generations, the world changes. If young people don't watch an entire game, it's because it isn't interesting enough, or we'll have to shorten the games.”
He then confessed, “There are matches that even I can't watch all of them, to be honest."
Florentino Perez says we may need to make football matches shorter than 90 minutes 😳 pic.twitter.com/wvxbIFdp5c
— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) April 20, 2021
Perhaps FIFA, the video game that compresses a 90-minute match into a much shorter experience, is impacting young fans’ perceptions, if Perez is to be believed with that statistic. But the “low-quality games” in Europe may have more to do with the absence of salary caps and super-rich teams like Real Madrid loading up on talent rather than a match lasting two 45-minute halves.
Plenty of people take shots at MLS’s labyrinthine rules around player salaries and TAM and GAM, but the system MLS has created is a major reason why the league has what Commissioner Don Garber, in order to avoid saying “parity,” calls “competitive balance.” And it results in a league where most teams have a legitimate shot at the playoffs and therefore the title. Factors like chemistry and coaching become essential; no one in MLS is going to respond to a subpar season by plunking down 100 million Euros (or more) on Erling Haaland or Kylian Mbappe.
One of the points I make to potential American soccer converts is the viewing experience fits into a tidy two hours, including a 15-minute halftime break. Compared to the sprawl of a Major League Baseball or a college football game, soccer is short, and its rhythms are ingrained and universal.
I’m not above a bit of disruption in sport to make it better. Let’s have a discussion about instituting a pitch clock in baseball or about using the Elam Ending in basketball. Soccer could use a faster VAR process (and maybe not rule a fingernail offside to be offside), going to penalty kicks after 90 minutes in tournaments (rather than the 30 minutes of extra time that can be more about stamina than great soccer), or even bringing back the MLS 1.0 shootout (where players run at goal from 35 yards out, which is arguably more a test of soccer skill than a spot kick and also highly entertaining to boot).
But disrupting a core element of soccer just to attempt to satisfy younger viewers? It’s the worst idea Perez has endorsed this week. And that, obviously, is saying a lot.
